Director: Ramon Zürcher
A birthday party becomes a pressure cooker of old resentments in The Sparrow in the Chimney (2024), a Swiss family drama that studies two sisters through the smallest gestures in a crowded house.
What is The Sparrow in the Chimney about?
Karen has spent years holding her household together with quiet, controlled precision, while her sister Jule moves through life with a looseness that Karen has never been able to relax into. When their extended families gather under one roof for a birthday celebration, the gap between the two sisters stops being a private matter and becomes something everyone in the house can feel. Children run between rooms, adults trade glances loaded with history, and small domestic moments, a spilled drink, an overheard comment, a door left open, start to carry far more weight than they should. Rather than building toward a single confrontation, the film lets tension accumulate through routine and repetition, following its ensemble of relatives room to room as old roles reassert themselves. By the end of the day, nothing dramatic needs to happen for the audience to understand exactly how these two sisters see each other, and how long that view has been forming.
Cast & crew
Maren Eggert and Britta Hammelstein anchor the film as the two sisters at its center, with Luise Heyer, Andreas Döhler, Milian Zerzawy, Lea Zoë Voss, Paula Schindler, and Ilja Bultmann rounding out the extended household. Director Ramon Zürcher, known for his precise, observational style, builds the film around gesture and framing rather than plot mechanics.
Context & significance
The Sparrow in the Chimney premiered in 2024 as part of Zürcher's ongoing interest in domestic spaces as sites of quiet conflict, following the loose thematic thread of his earlier work. It belongs to a strain of European art-house drama that trusts small behavioral details, rather than dialogue-heavy confrontation, to carry the emotional weight of a story.
Where & how to watch
The Sparrow in the Chimney is available on K-Time with Farsi subtitles, bringing this closely observed Swiss drama to Persian-speaking viewers. Browsing the film's page is free, and watching it simply requires signing into a K-Time account, with menus and navigation fully supported in Farsi.